AppZilla 2 – 100 in 1! Does It All

Appzilla 2 – 100 in 1! is like a toolbox for your iPhone. You can get by without it for awhile but once you’ve made the investment the capabilities of your iPhone will increase significantly.

Fossil Software‘s 100 mini app package delivers everything from a zippo type lighter to a loan calculator and a grill timer. The slogan for this app alone might as well be “There’s an app for that,” but let’s jump in the details to determine if this tool is worth your hard earned dollar.

AppZilla 2 – 100 in 1! is the successor to 90 in 1: Appzilla 1. Some customers were enraged when the most recent rendition released as a completely new app instead of as an update to AppZilla 1, but as long as you’re okay with forking over another dollar with the theoretical 110 in 1 releases, this is definitely worth considering.

After all, AppZilla 2 boasts ten previously unseen apps including a barcode scanner, vintage FX camera lens, dog clicker, Days Until countdown, Face FX, Walkie Talkie for use via bluetooth, LED Strobe light, Sports Radio and more. The new release also features HD, retina display friendly graphics and a favorites tagging feature for your favorites of the bunch.

Individually speaking, about half of AppZilla 2’s mini-apps feel like free apps you could hunt around for and download individually in the app store. The jokes and quotes mini-apps feel like exactly that, but it’s easy to make the wasted apps disappear in the interface and the whole bundle as a unit is much more appealing.

After all, it’s not everywhere that you’ll find an app that turns your iPhone 4 into a solid flashlight or a police scanner complete with presets and one button access to 10-4’s across the country. This, along with the hearing test app that plays sounds only people of certain ages can hear, are definitely a couple of AppZilla 2’s highlights.

The loan calculator and easy to access pitch pipe are also standouts, but walking around knowing you’re equipped with a basic coin toss, a dice roll, and a crystal ball can’t hurt your odds much either.

AppZilla 2’s biggest advantage is the fact that it feels like a toolbox minus the extra weight. The moon phase calculator combined with the extra appealing battery life detector are great to have around, but overall the mini-app within a single app interface could use a change or two.

For starters, although there are a lot of customization settings overall, very few of them operate as fluidly as I’d hoped. You can change the wallpaper (4 choices) and sounds (3 choices), but you can’t preview your changes until you’ve made your selection and then scanned back to the main menu to see the results. This of course, is a subtle inconvenience but it’s perhaps worth mentioning.

Overall AppZilla 2 operates as advertised and the handy parking mini-app or ruler could easily save the day. The interface though, feels more like Android than iPhone and you have to click the “?” in the top right hand corner to learn the real tricks of the app (like the search bar that drops down when you tap the AppZilla text in the top of the app’s toolbar).

It has been a few days since I downloaded AppZilla and already it’s come in handy a time or two. It hasn’t saved the day yet, but with all that power in my pocket some aspect of AppZilla is sure to save the day at least once or twice down the road.

Bottom Line: AppZilla 2 is a bundle of utility and entertainment mini-apps rolled into one single unit. Some of the mini-apps are weak free equivalents, but more than a few are certain to come in handy in the longrun.